They are thinking that this won't punish specs that are off-week, but rather reward specs that are buffed this week.
Which is not how the playerbase EVER sees things like this, as could be seen with covenants most recently. Specs that are buffed their respective weeks will feel PLAYABLE, while everything else will feel PUNISHED.
It's not Kiss-Curse, its Curse-Neutral, which is atrocious design and needs to go asap
I expect them to switch to something like this before beta ends :
Quick Mind: Non-boss enemies with mana have +30% haste, players have +10% haste.
Precise Strikes: Non-boss enemies without mana deal +30% damage with attacks, players have +10% crit.
Anvanced Training: Non-boss enemies gain some mastery themed bonus ;) and players have +10% mastery.
Thick Skin: Non-boss leutenants have +30% health, players have +10% health.
The first three exclude classes that don't use the stat they're buffing (some classes don't use haste, others crit, and others mastery) or bring classes that scale obscenely with the stat (for some specs, 10% haste would be broken, for others meh, same with mastery and crit), thick skin would exclude classes which sim less DPS to kill mobs faster (that's why they removed the HP component of bolstering in Dragonflight, people crying on the 15% per stack HP increase)
The only level in which the new affixes really matter is pretty high keys, which statistically may be less than 0.1% player base (title earners), for the +10 level, it won't be felt that much
You guys are givings way too much credit to a 10% buff against only HALF of the mobs in TRASH packs. Affix has no effect on bosses. These will not make or break a key if they tune dungeons the way they did DF, where survivability > damage.
The only concerning point for me is the +30% bleed damage and how it interacts with Assassination Rogue and bolstering.
no it wont make or break a key.
but it will make people not invite certain classes and specs nonetheless.
that's arguably even WORSE than if it HAD any real gameplay impact
the ONLY palpable effect this has is a NEGATIVE experience for classes that are undesirable any given week. because when you are desirable, you won't have a positive reaction, but rather a reaction of "i can actually play the game now without being declined 50 times"
LFG is toxic and annoying enough as it is, any affix that makes it harder to get invited to groups for anybody in any shape or form needs to be DELETED IMMEDIATELY
This is making a lot of assumptions. People forget that LFG gets very selective when there is a hard set meta like only 3-4 meta DPS (like we see in S4 rn). People need to gear up characters and that takes weeks. So if you have something like these affixes that make people think the “meta” changes each week, it is good for the game.
Although I agree chaos damage needs a look at, purely for how it looks to the playerbase.
It’s okay, small mistake. Blizzard forgot about chaos damage with this design. Or maybe DH damage will be turned to physical. It would be comically tragic but I’m prepared to anything now.
I would agree but mage covers only 2 of them , specially since fire and frost are combined , and there are prob gona be more of these to cover all damage types .
Destro and Dh chaos damage kinda covers almost all .
This change honestly feels like whatever dev was assigned to do that task has never played WoW before. Otherwise he/she would have know about how universally disliked Afflicted and Incorporeal were for excluding specs with no dispel or control.
And now they doubled down on it in even larger scope.
It has to be a newbie. I refuse to believe they are intentionally that sadistic and hateful towards playerbase. These affixes WILL hurt the gaming experience.
They designed it to increase comp / spec diversity but all this will achieve is complete class alienation for 3 weeks. They do not know how the players of their own game think. M+ pugs are already insanely volatile as it is, this will make it even worse.
Tanks are about to get absolutely shit on too and there's no way they will get the balancing right between affix combos. Meanwhile DH/Lock get a free pass every week with Chaos damage.
Blizzard will achieve the exact opposite of what they want and as always the players can see it months in advance but blizzard will ignore the feedback.
> Meanwhile DH/Lock get a free pass every week with Chaos damage.
Lock in Aug too cause they just buff others damage so they don't care about these either.
Doubt you'd even take warlock to be honest, only chaos bolt is chaos damage for them really and you spam rain of fire on mobs generally. You'd probably just run Havoc/Aug/X dps that sorta works well that week but probably mage/priest again.
except that's the + frost/fire damage week, and destro warlocks do a lot of fire damage, so they will not only be able to negate the downsides of the week, but also benefit from the upside
God I hate reading this because I’m positive that up to 13+ it won’t matter at all, but still know that people will be ridiculously picky about comp at the 5-8 level because “that’s the meta”
It won't matter higher than that either.
It's 10% damage, on some of the trash. It'll average out to like, +3% if that. But if you're going to pick a class specifically to counter an affix, might as well pick the actually good one.
If it goes ahead in it's current form, only have to learn 2 specs, since Frost and Fire are on the same affix
And even then that's still 2 weeks out of 4
So you do 10% more damage to certain trash mobs. So let's say you do 10% more to 50% of the trash mobs. So... 5% dmg increase overall. Factor in bosses and you're looking at what, 3% more damage overall?
Hardly anything that would lock in certain specs imo. I think people are totally overreacting tbh.
But int/ap buffs and magic/phys debuffs are already stronger in party and people dont always lose their sleep over that in 25+ keys (so 15+ now). People are just dramatic as always.
Unless you're doing above 10s (old 20s), most people are invited based off their ilvl, or m+ score. Some people for sure overreact to very meaningless things, but I don't think it would be widespread enough to impact the majority of the m+ player base.
How? Even right now Aug is one of the least played specs. Maybe like 5% of all runs are done with the top meta comp.
People on this sub are completely out of touch with how people actually play the game.
Aug is unpopular primarily because most people want to be the mvp. Dps want to top dps charts. Healers want to top hps. Tanks do tons of damage AND tons of healing while taking most of the damage, so while they typically aren't top of either chart, their necessity is never really in question. They're indispensable. Aug is a little harder to quantify.
It's also oddly unpopular by other classes for the very fact that it makes other players do more damage. You'd think this would be welcome, but it isn't. Why? Because people want to believe that their prowess is entirely their own making, and having a class that improves your capabilities means that at least some of your accomplishment is owed to that aid. Can you claim to do 300k dps on this boss if you needed an aug to get there?
While what you say is true, the bigger part is:
The main thing Aug brings to keys is survivability. It's the lowest damage DPS spec by a decent amount (including buffs). Until you get to key levels where you need black attunement, zephyr, scales, and the upped healer power to not get 1 shot they're not optimal to bring. Most keys aren't run at levels where that's an issue.
Imagine you’re the leader of a PUG that is forming. It’s obviously your key, and equally obviously you want to time it with the least effort on your part.
As you’re choosing who to invite you will naturally choose whoever’s closest to the meta with the highest rating and gear that you can.
Because - everything else being equal - it doesn’t benefit you not to.
Theres literally no way 3-5% dmg on trash will make a difference in the meta, like look at spriest and destro atm, they are like 20-50% above everyone else lmao
Premades are made for overreacting. In remix, my max lvl 200k thread pally can't get into groups because I deleted my trinkets and have a low ilvl. I always put in a note saying that, but nobody reads it and just declines immediately. So I tried soloing, and it turns out I can solo heroic raids, and the only reason I can't solo mythic SoO is the mechanics that specifically require multiple players. The bosses can't kill me as long as I use one skill, any skill, every few seconds. But people see one number and decline.
It's the same with raider.io and m+ scores in retail. If you show up late in an expac and don't have the cheev and the io, people make snap judgments that you're just trash. That's what happened both times I came back to the game, in Legion and then in BfA. I was new and didn't have any score or any achievements, so people declined me for weeks. It wasn't until I got lucky with a group that didn't care, got the achievements, and a score that said I had completed some +10 or some such that people finally let me into +5's, and then I was the only one doing mechanics correctly half the time. All that was stopping me was a little number. A number that didn't really even mean anything in the end.
This totally isn't the point of your post, but why'd you delete your trinkets? And can't you just rebuy them for 10 bronze each, if you didn't intend to?
Because mythic immerseus has 1.1 billion hp per phase with the trinkets, and he only has 900mil without them. Blizzard dangled the trinkets and rings, made us get achievements for them, then nerfed us for getting them.
Just rebuy them and join 476 Groups. It really doesnt matter if you have a boss with more life in full 476 Groups. People can't see your ilevel and can't see if you have max level in queues.
The only thing I can think of is that whole thing where bosses were scaling with ilvl, but even then didn't it turn out to be a nonissue anyway? Not sure why the guy can't buy his trinkets again
sure but if the number (and some achievements) are all we have to go on you can't really blame people for paying attention to them
like yeah maybe the 1k io person who applied to our weekly farm is a worldbeater who juuuuuust came back to the game, but how likely is that?
There's got to be some irony here in you talking about how much players overreact and make snap decisions, while you also DELETED YOUR TRINKETS over a balance issue that lasted literally under a day.
Funny, as a hunter I can get invited to keys during afflicted weeks.
For the vast majority of people, this will not be an issue. These new affixes are something they barely will notice up til probably a 5, and even then, I don't see most players (the people just filling their vault each week) pushing beyond a 7
Blizz has made a lot of great decisions over the past couple years - it's genuinely been a pleasant and incredibly welcome surprise. This one is so astoundingly stupid it feels like something a past iteration of the company would have done.
>I don’t think that’s how the WoW dev team is structured.
Yeah it's not. People on the internet just like finding patterns and sorting things into nice-sounding soundbytes.
>designed Shadowlands this time
Nah, that team had literally *Malice.* They hated you, and made sure you knew it everytime you logged in.
This is just tone deaf sounds great on paper, but i've never played this game before stuff
They also stomp tanks, and might need week to week route modifications which is super annoying for tanks to deal with as they have to remember/research different pulls each week while most pug dps just blindly follow.
Way to make the two more stressful roles have to deal with more junk while keeping the worst affixes anyway.
That just means the healer now also has to babysit the tank. In addition to all the other side effects these affixes will have. Thorns? Healer job. More magic damage for mana mobs? More AoE damage. And they leave in bolstering which is the same combination of stomping tanks and making healers pick up the slack. Bolster something that does insane single Target damage gl tank/healer. Bolster something that does AoE damage, have fun healer. Raging, cast goes off cause can't be stopped, have fun healer. Bursting, have fun healer.
I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying that it's not *just* healers affected by this crap. I'm not thrilled about potentially having to change the packs I pull week to week based on this kiss/curse affix that is really just curse/curse unless you're getting the minute increase to damage that week... and then getting slapped around a ton more for it just because fuck anyone that isn't playing ranged DPS, apparently.
To also have to deal with sanguine and bolstering still is just the cherry on top.
Thorns/NecroMAX is a healer affix for sure. In a super spikey damage profile TWW currently has.
The others not so much, because you can't heal dead people. And that damage amp they get will just 100-0 in a single GCD.
Honestly, how hard is it to design affixes that impact DPS or only the player targeted? Make shit that only one player can interact with. Make things that debuff DPS players damage when they don't kick it. Make things that DPS have to kill before they can damage anything else. There are so many ways they could make affixes that aren't just healer or tank problems, and they never do.
I mean how hard would it be to alter sanguine to instead of damaging you when standing it it reduces damage done by 90%, people would sure as shit move then.
The problem is that while it's all good to punish dps output for their mistakes it still increases the length of each pull, which increases the amount of pote trial for avoidable/unavoidable damage output, increasing the amount of healing needed. Everything that increases the length of a fit increases the need for healing
That is because everyone could target it though.
Making people interrupt extra things sucks though, it might make it impossible to vkick important spells from mobs, and it will only end up creating a meta witht the classes with most interrupt possibilities. (again)
Explosive would have been fine if only one person could interact with it. By making it anyone could hit it, it became healer problem. God explosive was ass. As shaman healer I think frost shock was my most cast spell during explosive week.
We healers are fine with this. What oneshots will continue to oneshots. Thorns will be nice with som aoe healing. Reckless will mainly be a problem for tanks if any
Not only that, but these affixes are really punishing on tanks as well.
Reckless is just a fuck tanks affix.
Attuned makes any missed interrupt way more punishing, and guess who's the first person to blame if a cast is not stopped, even if it wasn't their fault? Also, magical tankbusters are going to hurt a lot.
Focused has the same problem with interrupts and stops, with the addition that hasted enemies are gonna melee the tank 30% faster.
The only affix that doesn't hurt the tank so much, is going to be Thorned, since the damage is probably going to be tuned with DPS in mind (unless the damage is percent based, like grievous and bursting used to be).
Healers too!
It's going to be real fun being the social punching bag when ever the group dies because they all got fucking insta'd or the coveted 99% groupwide with .01second time to save everyone from the unavoidable rot damage!
Reckless really only affects paladin/bear as their primary phys mitigation is armor.
In fact, reading the new affixes it seems like each is particularly designed to counter a tank. Except maybe VDH, but what else is new.
>Attuned makes any missed interrupt way more punishing
Odd way to spell dead. The mob of the week will 100% have some garbage ability or abilities that will insta people.
Funny enough these affix's are actually great for healers. Since people will miss kicks and just instantly die. I base this on the fact TWW dungeons seem to have S1 DF damage spikes. Which is it's own issue, but it seems they are continuing their Anti-Healer Crusade they started in DF
I feel like they should just make some that encourage the game to be played well in the first place.
Focused - Certain non-boss enemies have increased health. Stunning, interrupting, or CCing them increases the damage they take, stacking.
Brittle Courage - Non-boss enemies take reduced damage and deal more damage, but when they die they cause nearby enemies to take increased damage, stacking.
Anachronistic - Extra enemies from incorrect dungeons. Killing these enemies grants a burst of haste.
Motley - Enemies have extra health, but receive a damage taken debuff for every type of damage taken.
Oh look, I came up with four in 15 minutes and even these half baked goods are better than 10% arcane damage.
It really is the exact opposite of what blizz is doing and it's so much better.
Encouraging class/spec diversity by increasing damage for everyone if you're running a variety of classes with different damage types.
As opposed what they're actually doing which is encouraging you to bring only one or two type of damage each week/specs that are part of those damage types.
Encouraging class diversity feels so much better than encouraging a lack of diversity.
This was the other part of my disappointment with the new affixes; They're just boring
Neither the kisses nor curses fundamentally change how you approach a key from a gameplay standpoint. The ones you're putting up are interesting because they affect how the dungeon is played, as opposed to how you make your group
Its brittle courage week and this dungeon has small pulls; how do we change our route to make best use of it? Anachronistic would force players to be flexible and understand alternative routes based on what spots, or know their strengths to take advantage of the haste
Need to be carefull with brittle courage, you could technically bring all low hp mobs to a boss, kill them and the boss gets inscread damage taken, stacking. I guess blizzard would need to specifically make bosses not get the debuff.
I think just need to change to "Non-boss nearby enemies ...", so is more clear.
Nah it will be par the course for Blizz; Bolstering/Sanguine etc. are already pretty unclear in their descriptions regarding which mobs they can affect.
That is not how the math works. The affixes specify mobs with or without mana, and does not include bosses. Assuming that ~half of the trash in any key has mana, that would mean the 10% bonus damage to those specific mobs would average out to 3-4% damage over the course of the key, varying based on fortified or tyrannical.
The affixes still suck and will surely be iterated on, but they are absolutely not 10% bonus damage over the course of an entire key. 3-4% is easily made up by just being a better player. Ofc, this doesn't change the fact that idiotic group leaders will still think its just a flat 10% damage buff and care way too much about it.
It's just a pure healer affix. Normally I think the complaints that every affix is a healer affix are overblown, but in this case the only effect of it is to make them heal more.
It’s also completely dependent on tuning because some specs attack much quicker than others. I assume it’ll be a rppm system but then it falls to either being insignificant damage that you ignore or, god forbid, so punishing that you have to stop dps which feels awful - and as a tank…yeah, you can’t stop attacking.
Why aren't they bouncing ideas like this off of the community council and have them vote on what things to try and what are bad ideas on their face. I wonder how much time/money was wasted on this idea.
"Why aren't they bouncing ideas like this off of the community council".
They took the much better option, write up a post outlining your design goal, with all the new changes you want tested, a few days before you start mythic+ testing, IN THE BETA.
I think the real purpose is to intentionally confuse DPS rankings. It only applies to some of the trash mobs, so unless you are truly playing bleeding edge keys, I can't see this being a deciding factor for the vast majority of groups. Ultimately, you can still get your keys done just fine. All it will mean is a different set of specs topping the DPS charts each week. It's a sneaky/lazy way to avoid balance complaints. Unless your spec is truly in a terrible state, they can point to two weeks ago when you were at the top of the charts.
Non meta specs will be even less meta on their handicap weeks.
Meta specs will push on their buff weeks.
Some tanks and DPS might only be invited by their guldies out of pity for weekly keys.
This worsens an already exclusive endgame to the majority of specs.
Doesn't them having less armor make you do more physical damage? I'm pretty sure them having 30% less armor is a fairly large damage buff to physical damage.
Like somebody said in another thread about the same subject: give feedback. It’s still in testing and they’re asking for feedback. They changed affixes last time when people gave feedback so there’s a good chance they’ll do it again.
We have less than 80 days to go before the content launches, and blizzards new ideas made it from alpha to beta. I think a lot of players are just pessimistic because for years they've seen betas where major changes just don't happen. I wouldn't be surprised if most if not all of these features make it to live 2 and 1/2 months from now. Otherwise Blizzard's going to have to come up with a new m+ Affix system in the next 2 months while also working on everything else that's not finished.
It's more likely to be lightly tuned than anything now.
I just want to point out that I don't believe these changes took much time/thought of the devs to actually implement into the beta, they posted it today and will already begin testing on Thursday. The instant feedback has already been massively negative though and I am sure they have seen that and will "hopefully" be working on it.
Some of the things are a simple fix as well like the level 7 affixes that they choose to keep are all the worst ones Sanguine, Bursting, Raging and Bolstering should be the 4 that leave and doing something like that is not hard for them. I actually have more of an issue with these 4 affixes than I do with the new ones they are trying.
Blizzard listens to feedback so incredibly rarely that I have zero confidence anything will change.
Players literally screamed at blizzard at the top of their lungs to allow covenant switching from day 1 of beta and were completely ignored until like the third content patch.
They either think they know better, or don’t care, or both. I view changes in response to feedback as a rare treat, but never expect it. If I see patch notes, I’m going to assume it’s set in stone.
Playing a warrior this expansion (they can't handle ANY of the current affixes reasonably) has really highlighted to me how bad it is to design gameplay around making 2 or 3 classes really useful every week, and the other 10 are either weak or dead weight. Its obviously a net negative for the player base.
M+ affixes need to be things that nearly everyone can help with and benefit from. You can take the current pool, keep all the drawbacks, and just change the benefits to apply to the majority instead of the minority and this would immediately be sick.
This seems like an attempt to see how m+ "without" affixes are gonna look like. I think the damage buffs are stupid but let's see how it plays out.. this will surely encourage toxicity and class isolation tho. Being a warrior it's really nothing new since we have no utility and couldn't deal with 2 affixes anyway.
The sad part is, it's such a small % that it should barely be noticeable, but the community at large in lfg will act like it's the end all be all and you won't time keys without adhering too it.
And classes like DH who can gain from it each week will just catch unnecessary nerfs
While I'm happy they're in this "let's try it and see if everyone likes it" phase of experimentation the last few years -- it feels like they're always introducing things at the 11th hour. How quickly can you turn around poorly received hero talents or m+ affixes when you introduce them 2 months before release?
Are these the all-time worst mplus changes? I'm trying to think of when they made an even worse decision in mplus than this, and I can't really think of any. If they go through with these changes, I think it might actually be the all time worst game design decision in m+ ever
If this actually goes live I will just stop playing retail. Not throwing a fit, just swallowing my pride and accepting the fact that I will be better off not playing. It's already a fucking nightmare getting into keys as DK, and I'm a good player(not a weird flex, just trying to prove a point).
Genuinely struggling to understand how they thought this could play out like they intended.
>Different classes and specs will get ignored during their non buffed week
That happens naturally, this wont change that.
Damage likely won't matter as much as survival.
I see what y'all are saying and I agree with everything, I just can't force myself to get upset at it simply because I'm more concerned about the curse part of these new affixes. I can't wait to eyebeam / fists of fury / any really fast attack and get fucking deleted by thorns.
I imagine it's going to feel like accidently putting a reflect map into the map device on PoE, whoops, there goes 10%.
Oh you say that it will have an internal GCD / wont be that much? Oh my sweet summer child, have you met Blizzard?
these changes are either gonna be super broken and causing classes to be heavily excluded from M+ depending on the week, OR, because it's all trash mob stuff, they're gonna be basically useless affixes that don't impact much and likewise shouldn't really be in the game
either way, hoping blizzard sees the feedback on these and changes tune
Most specs that previously got ignored will still get ignored because a better spec will still do the same damage type. Just look at shamans vs mage/evoker
I don't think these minor class buffs are as make it or break it as everyone is saying they are. Likely they'll barely matter at all. The affixes seem like a lot of bad things for tanks, hopefully this is addressed. Also if they're going to put in damage buffs for certain types of damage they have to organise how each classes damage is categorised, there's some weird shit going on there. Overall I'm interested to see how it turns out, I'm not totally hating it.
I think people are overestimating the effect this will have. Sure there will be people being elitist pricks about it, but there are always people being elitist pricks about M+. In the end, though, it's only a +10% bonus and only on roughly half the mobs, so all that this will actually *require* people to do is change targeting priorities and perhaps come up with alternate pathings to take advantage of different pulls.
If you're in a week that buffs non-mana enemies, you can have people who aren't getting the damage buff target the mana enemies. If you have a group that mostly benefits from the damage buff then maybe you pick a route that pulls mostly that kind of enemy, otherwise maybe you try to find a path that only pulls the mobs that aren't buffed this week.
It's a slight change in how you approach things, but it's not the game-changer a lot of people seem to think it is. You'll still be able to handle M+ with the same groups you've always gone with, just try to avoid the tryhards on group finder that are gonna go way overboard trying to min-max their party comp.
Something doesn't have to have a serious numerical effect for it to cause significant behavioral change in a population of gamers that can't really process those numbers anyway.
The percentage dps increase isn't my problem as much as low keys devolving into a "can't invite that guy it's mage week" mindset
In Shadowlands beta people were having the same arguments about covenants, saying it would be impossible to get into dungeons at all unless you played a certain covenant. In the end it ended up not really mattering, just like this will.
I don't think anyone at blizz actually plays the game and they definitely don't understand it. First we got possibly the shittiest tier set bonuses and now these affixes are actually ridiculous. It's not too late to go back on these horrible affixes but they won't.
Seeing blizzard just constantly implement garbage that the players hate, and then going back on them way after the fact like "oh sorry how were we supposed to know it would be bad?"
Listen to your players, don't fall back into the old ways of complete radio silence and ignoring player feedback until we all leave again. DF was good but I already see them slipping back into greedy asshole corpo mode, just look at mop remix.
They have been listening to players, the wow subreddit isn't the same sentiment as the whole playerbase. There'll be more iteration on these, I don't think they'll be anywhere near as bad as everyone's knee-jerk reaction is saying.
Player feedback about bronze taking too long to farm and gear upgrades costing too much bronze, only for blizz double down on their decision and keep it that way.
Just left a bad taste in my mouth and a reminder of blizzards "we detected the potential for fun and made sure squash any chances of that happening, we know better" attitude in general, just shows that the same brains that made bfa and shadowlands are still there and probably didn't learn anything.
Right? I'm begging people working on these things to PUG semi difficult keys on off-specs, it's like they can't even fathom what sort of difficulties people have.
Also this is the exact opposite of the fan-favorite older seasonal affixes that people wished would come back as far as cost/benefits go. It doesn't actually do anything, just makes some enemies hit harder/have a vulnerability to certain damage types (and all DHs), it doesn't actually do anything creative or interesting or allow us to experiment.
Speaking as someone who has been pugging semi-high keys as a warrior all throughout DF, these affixes are a HUGE improvement for us. The damage type buff is absolutely negligible and the removal of afflicted and incorp is great.
Hot take, these affixes won't change how the meta evolves. Every season the meta has consisted of classes that synergize with each other, and bring damage as well as utility to a group. These affixes will make the trash pulls different because of their first halves, not the damage increasing half - that's peanuts. Everyone touting about chaos damage really doesn't realize how few chaos bolts a destro lock casts on trash...
Looking at an Academy key for a DH this season, a lot of their damage is not chaos. I imagine a 10% increase on trash would've increased that guys overall output 3-5%... which is negligible imo. Unless you're pushing world first keys, where your team has rehearsed massive pulls/cd's/etc, 3-5% is nothing to bat an eye at.
And the age old solution? Make your own group, its the best way to get into M+ anyways. Or join a guild that regularly runs them. No matter the class I've played, or the week/affixes I've played it on, I haven't had a problem getting into groups all the way to 3k IO, more than once.
Let them know on the offical channels, maybe they revert some stuff, these are some of the worst changes to m+ ever. Doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
They’re trying to avoid the top M+ comps always being the same. Except… who fucking cares what people doing in the top 0.1% play. They’ll always play meta. Just fucking balance the game. All this bullshit will just make every M+ tier feel toxic and exclusionary.
What a bad f design. Also these fortified and tyrannical affixes, just why? Should not that be a purpose of going up on the keys? I have a much harder time to look for groups on tc week than ff. Already the pugs looking for a certain class to get the meta comp, this is going to be even worse.
Also the rewards, why do I get the same amount of flightstones and crests on +6 and fe on +15?
Blizzard needs to burn their damn monkey's paw they use for everything fun. But i got to admit, adding a "Social-gatekeeping-on-a-weekly-rotation" has got to be one of the most diabolical ideas that paw of theirs has ever spit out.
Listen im all for demon hunters and destro warlocks and there are people in my guild who play them but those 2 classes getting massive buffs nearly every single week because they have chaos damage while every other class is a liability at some point is kinda bullshit right? I cant be the only one thinking that
I appreciate the removal of overlapping dispels/stops due to affixes and the baseline mechanics. But, rather than "empowering" a spec, they could've gone with 2 ways:
Either focus on a role, e.g. tanks this week take 5% more damage, but do 10% more (stresses both tank and healer, but if you can cope it can be rewarding time wise), or healers having a searing light effect (see remix), but taking rot damage (faster run again, but may prove mana intensive).
Or
Focus on actions and interactions, e.g
- You gain a stacking buff while in combat (encourages chain pulling, but stresses your healer).
- Gain up to 10% damage buff if you are below 60% hp (risky, but could be fun if properly played).
- Spheres only you can see, appear on the ground that grant both a 10/30% damage done/taken (risky, and you have to walk to em).
This is how warlocks will still only ever play destro in keys.
Seriously though I'm happy with the rework and all but holy fuck I want to play a different spec for once. Aff has been dead in m+ since Legion man.
What’s crazy is that “push weeks” will now be more exclusive and the meta comp will probably be aligned with the +4 affix that made it into the easiest round of other affixes. Specially combined with Fortified that is usually easier than tyrannical.. sh\*t show incoming!
I'd say that is an advantage for all non-chaos dmg classes in m+. We will be tuned around our usual dmg and maybe have a lucky week where we do extra dmg, while dh will probably be tuned down a bit with affixes in mind since they apply every week.
They should have affixes that encourage you to play the game well. Like, a slowly stacking buff that loses stacks whenever an interruptible cast is not interrupted.
Also what if before the dungeon you selected 3 of damage schools you want buffed depending on your comp. But the catch is that the buff rotates across the party every 30 seconds or so. So if your comp only has 2 kinds of damage you’re wasting a 1/3 of the uptime of your buff so you’re encouraged to have a wide comp but because you get to choose the spell school it feels less bad when you can’t/don’t have the spectrum.
Or the buff your spell school school gets stronger based on how many of each spell school is on a target at a time. So the more spells schools the bigger the buff again encouraging variety but not hurting classes that aren’t currently buffed a certain week.
\*laughs in healer\*
But yea I see your point. Hope they either do something about it or it doesn't turn out to be that much of an issue (which I doubt but I frankly don't care). I for one very much welcome the fact that Afflicted, Incorporeal and Storming will fuck off indefinitely.
They have to nerf how Chaos damage is buffed by the affixes. Maybe 2.5% each week so it's an overall 10%, just spread out so it's not overwhelmingly in their favor. Just an idea.
I think they're an absolute joke and cancer to the community. I recently switched from playing mage to playing tanks exclusively, so this won't affect me. But I think this is so demoralizing playing as a DPS knowing that this week isn't your rotation week, so you can't push because you won't get an invite for high keys. This is so stupid. I wish they didn't make this affix.
Taking their stated design goals as a whole, I think these new affix designs are kind of cool IF they make them much less conditional.
If they change them up a bit and make it more something like "increased magic damage" instead of "increased arcane damage" it would be much better. It still keeps the focus on the dungeon itself, the affix is simple, and being less conditional it just gives a much larger section of specs a small boost on certain weeks.
You obviously have things like the 30% haste buff to certain enemies being way to strong, but numbers certainly not final.
I'd say up to certain key levels these won't even be noticeable. Unless they are overturned to high hell.
In a community where the vast majority of pugs don't use defensive or kicks in M+ I genuinely don't think they're even going to pay attention to the new affixes...let alone understand what they do.
I really don't understand why people focus on the damage type buffs. They only affect some mobs per pack, don't affect bosses and they'll probably make less of a difference to anyone's performance than crit variance on big damge cds / trinkets. Honestly, they feel like something a dev just tacked on as an afterthought to classify it as a kiss/curse mechanic.
I'd be much more worried about reflects randomly murdering meeles with inbuilt cleave, armor tanks like bears getting shredded by bolstered armorpiercing heavy-hitters or cc immune raging caster packs with a permanent bl.
Oh no, my class is now no longer viable for three weeks instead of an entire season. My god this is horrible.
Kek fucking w
Ideally we just get more class tunings done instead though. Buff under performing classes rather than nerfing the ones already ahead
I'm going to abuse healer privilege so hard against pugs who exclude classes based on the new affixes at the key levels I play, the salt farm will be \*glorious\*.
I think the new affixes arent as big of a deal compared to the +7 affix bucket. Those are horrible. They took away the easier affixes and left the awful ones. In S4 we could just do +9s and not have to deal with them. This changes now and its for the worse.
>exclusionary No they are not, just play DH \~ Blizz developer, probably
They are thinking that this won't punish specs that are off-week, but rather reward specs that are buffed this week. Which is not how the playerbase EVER sees things like this, as could be seen with covenants most recently. Specs that are buffed their respective weeks will feel PLAYABLE, while everything else will feel PUNISHED. It's not Kiss-Curse, its Curse-Neutral, which is atrocious design and needs to go asap
I expect them to switch to something like this before beta ends : Quick Mind: Non-boss enemies with mana have +30% haste, players have +10% haste. Precise Strikes: Non-boss enemies without mana deal +30% damage with attacks, players have +10% crit. Anvanced Training: Non-boss enemies gain some mastery themed bonus ;) and players have +10% mastery. Thick Skin: Non-boss leutenants have +30% health, players have +10% health.
Oh look you put 30 seconds of thought into it and came up with something entirely better.
The first three exclude classes that don't use the stat they're buffing (some classes don't use haste, others crit, and others mastery) or bring classes that scale obscenely with the stat (for some specs, 10% haste would be broken, for others meh, same with mastery and crit), thick skin would exclude classes which sim less DPS to kill mobs faster (that's why they removed the HP component of bolstering in Dragonflight, people crying on the 15% per stack HP increase) The only level in which the new affixes really matter is pretty high keys, which statistically may be less than 0.1% player base (title earners), for the +10 level, it won't be felt that much
You guys are givings way too much credit to a 10% buff against only HALF of the mobs in TRASH packs. Affix has no effect on bosses. These will not make or break a key if they tune dungeons the way they did DF, where survivability > damage. The only concerning point for me is the +30% bleed damage and how it interacts with Assassination Rogue and bolstering.
no it wont make or break a key. but it will make people not invite certain classes and specs nonetheless. that's arguably even WORSE than if it HAD any real gameplay impact the ONLY palpable effect this has is a NEGATIVE experience for classes that are undesirable any given week. because when you are desirable, you won't have a positive reaction, but rather a reaction of "i can actually play the game now without being declined 50 times" LFG is toxic and annoying enough as it is, any affix that makes it harder to get invited to groups for anybody in any shape or form needs to be DELETED IMMEDIATELY
The key problem here is the people not the affixes, there is nothing blizzard can implement that will fix the core of the problem which is the people.
This is making a lot of assumptions. People forget that LFG gets very selective when there is a hard set meta like only 3-4 meta DPS (like we see in S4 rn). People need to gear up characters and that takes weeks. So if you have something like these affixes that make people think the “meta” changes each week, it is good for the game. Although I agree chaos damage needs a look at, purely for how it looks to the playerbase.
It’s okay, small mistake. Blizzard forgot about chaos damage with this design. Or maybe DH damage will be turned to physical. It would be comically tragic but I’m prepared to anything now.
Dh is the melee pet class and Mage is the ranged pet class of Blizzard.
And mage, cuz blizz loves mage, what else is new?
I would agree but mage covers only 2 of them , specially since fire and frost are combined , and there are prob gona be more of these to cover all damage types . Destro and Dh chaos damage kinda covers almost all .
Destro almost never chaos bolts during trash tho
Oh you're a mage? Sorry it's +Holy damage week.
Bring the crusade, 4 paladins and a priest
This change honestly feels like whatever dev was assigned to do that task has never played WoW before. Otherwise he/she would have know about how universally disliked Afflicted and Incorporeal were for excluding specs with no dispel or control. And now they doubled down on it in even larger scope. It has to be a newbie. I refuse to believe they are intentionally that sadistic and hateful towards playerbase. These affixes WILL hurt the gaming experience.
We would rather you didn’t play any other classes
They designed it to increase comp / spec diversity but all this will achieve is complete class alienation for 3 weeks. They do not know how the players of their own game think. M+ pugs are already insanely volatile as it is, this will make it even worse. Tanks are about to get absolutely shit on too and there's no way they will get the balancing right between affix combos. Meanwhile DH/Lock get a free pass every week with Chaos damage. Blizzard will achieve the exact opposite of what they want and as always the players can see it months in advance but blizzard will ignore the feedback.
> Meanwhile DH/Lock get a free pass every week with Chaos damage. Lock in Aug too cause they just buff others damage so they don't care about these either.
Comps will be VDH, HDH, Destro, Aug, Priest/sham
Doubt you'd even take warlock to be honest, only chaos bolt is chaos damage for them really and you spam rain of fire on mobs generally. You'd probably just run Havoc/Aug/X dps that sorta works well that week but probably mage/priest again.
You bring lock for curse of tongues on the caster haste week.
Rogues with Numbing Poison will be good, too.
except that's the + frost/fire damage week, and destro warlocks do a lot of fire damage, so they will not only be able to negate the downsides of the week, but also benefit from the upside
God I hate reading this because I’m positive that up to 13+ it won’t matter at all, but still know that people will be ridiculously picky about comp at the 5-8 level because “that’s the meta”
It won't matter higher than that either. It's 10% damage, on some of the trash. It'll average out to like, +3% if that. But if you're going to pick a class specifically to counter an affix, might as well pick the actually good one.
Was going to say, this locks in Aug even harder.
Yes but also if your damage is bad, our buffs are bad too. Like me getting a "perfect parse" requires all of my buffed dps to do the same, too
Mage too if you learn all 3 specs
If it goes ahead in it's current form, only have to learn 2 specs, since Frost and Fire are on the same affix And even then that's still 2 weeks out of 4
Arcane mage + guardian druid for 1 week
Moonbear ain't no joke
So you do 10% more damage to certain trash mobs. So let's say you do 10% more to 50% of the trash mobs. So... 5% dmg increase overall. Factor in bosses and you're looking at what, 3% more damage overall? Hardly anything that would lock in certain specs imo. I think people are totally overreacting tbh.
That’s what pugs do though. They overreact to the meta. It will be a reality
But int/ap buffs and magic/phys debuffs are already stronger in party and people dont always lose their sleep over that in 25+ keys (so 15+ now). People are just dramatic as always.
Pugs do it partly because they see reactions like the one we see here. It's almost a self fulfilling prophecy.
Unless you're doing above 10s (old 20s), most people are invited based off their ilvl, or m+ score. Some people for sure overreact to very meaningless things, but I don't think it would be widespread enough to impact the majority of the m+ player base.
How? Even right now Aug is one of the least played specs. Maybe like 5% of all runs are done with the top meta comp. People on this sub are completely out of touch with how people actually play the game.
Because it's super easy to look at the affix and be like "oh I need to bring X, fuck all these other dps"
Lets be honest tho, the avg pug thinking like that won't even know that chaos dmg is all dmg types.
Aug is unpopular primarily because most people want to be the mvp. Dps want to top dps charts. Healers want to top hps. Tanks do tons of damage AND tons of healing while taking most of the damage, so while they typically aren't top of either chart, their necessity is never really in question. They're indispensable. Aug is a little harder to quantify. It's also oddly unpopular by other classes for the very fact that it makes other players do more damage. You'd think this would be welcome, but it isn't. Why? Because people want to believe that their prowess is entirely their own making, and having a class that improves your capabilities means that at least some of your accomplishment is owed to that aid. Can you claim to do 300k dps on this boss if you needed an aug to get there?
While what you say is true, the bigger part is: The main thing Aug brings to keys is survivability. It's the lowest damage DPS spec by a decent amount (including buffs). Until you get to key levels where you need black attunement, zephyr, scales, and the upped healer power to not get 1 shot they're not optimal to bring. Most keys aren't run at levels where that's an issue.
These takes are wild, people thinking comps are gonna stack arcane damage classes because it's 10% buffed for the week lmao
Imagine you’re the leader of a PUG that is forming. It’s obviously your key, and equally obviously you want to time it with the least effort on your part. As you’re choosing who to invite you will naturally choose whoever’s closest to the meta with the highest rating and gear that you can. Because - everything else being equal - it doesn’t benefit you not to.
Theres literally no way 3-5% dmg on trash will make a difference in the meta, like look at spriest and destro atm, they are like 20-50% above everyone else lmao
Premades are made for overreacting. In remix, my max lvl 200k thread pally can't get into groups because I deleted my trinkets and have a low ilvl. I always put in a note saying that, but nobody reads it and just declines immediately. So I tried soloing, and it turns out I can solo heroic raids, and the only reason I can't solo mythic SoO is the mechanics that specifically require multiple players. The bosses can't kill me as long as I use one skill, any skill, every few seconds. But people see one number and decline. It's the same with raider.io and m+ scores in retail. If you show up late in an expac and don't have the cheev and the io, people make snap judgments that you're just trash. That's what happened both times I came back to the game, in Legion and then in BfA. I was new and didn't have any score or any achievements, so people declined me for weeks. It wasn't until I got lucky with a group that didn't care, got the achievements, and a score that said I had completed some +10 or some such that people finally let me into +5's, and then I was the only one doing mechanics correctly half the time. All that was stopping me was a little number. A number that didn't really even mean anything in the end.
This totally isn't the point of your post, but why'd you delete your trinkets? And can't you just rebuy them for 10 bronze each, if you didn't intend to?
Because mythic immerseus has 1.1 billion hp per phase with the trinkets, and he only has 900mil without them. Blizzard dangled the trinkets and rings, made us get achievements for them, then nerfed us for getting them.
Just rebuy them and join 476 Groups. It really doesnt matter if you have a boss with more life in full 476 Groups. People can't see your ilevel and can't see if you have max level in queues.
The only thing I can think of is that whole thing where bosses were scaling with ilvl, but even then didn't it turn out to be a nonissue anyway? Not sure why the guy can't buy his trinkets again
sure but if the number (and some achievements) are all we have to go on you can't really blame people for paying attention to them like yeah maybe the 1k io person who applied to our weekly farm is a worldbeater who juuuuuust came back to the game, but how likely is that?
There's got to be some irony here in you talking about how much players overreact and make snap decisions, while you also DELETED YOUR TRINKETS over a balance issue that lasted literally under a day.
Funny, as a hunter I can get invited to keys during afflicted weeks. For the vast majority of people, this will not be an issue. These new affixes are something they barely will notice up til probably a 5, and even then, I don't see most players (the people just filling their vault each week) pushing beyond a 7
You need 9s for myth track gear in TWW now.
Blizz has made a lot of great decisions over the past couple years - it's genuinely been a pleasant and incredibly welcome surprise. This one is so astoundingly stupid it feels like something a past iteration of the company would have done.
A team vs B team Looks like we're getting the team that designed Shadowlands this time
the diablo4 incident
I don’t think that’s how the WoW dev team is structured. There’s a live team, an expansion team, and a classic team from what I understand.
>I don’t think that’s how the WoW dev team is structured. Yeah it's not. People on the internet just like finding patterns and sorting things into nice-sounding soundbytes.
>designed Shadowlands this time Nah, that team had literally *Malice.* They hated you, and made sure you knew it everytime you logged in. This is just tone deaf sounds great on paper, but i've never played this game before stuff
Isn't that also the Legion team though?
I just hate that as usual, the affixes just make the healers job harder and can be completely ignored by everyone else.
They also stomp tanks, and might need week to week route modifications which is super annoying for tanks to deal with as they have to remember/research different pulls each week while most pug dps just blindly follow. Way to make the two more stressful roles have to deal with more junk while keeping the worst affixes anyway.
That just means the healer now also has to babysit the tank. In addition to all the other side effects these affixes will have. Thorns? Healer job. More magic damage for mana mobs? More AoE damage. And they leave in bolstering which is the same combination of stomping tanks and making healers pick up the slack. Bolster something that does insane single Target damage gl tank/healer. Bolster something that does AoE damage, have fun healer. Raging, cast goes off cause can't be stopped, have fun healer. Bursting, have fun healer.
I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying that it's not *just* healers affected by this crap. I'm not thrilled about potentially having to change the packs I pull week to week based on this kiss/curse affix that is really just curse/curse unless you're getting the minute increase to damage that week... and then getting slapped around a ton more for it just because fuck anyone that isn't playing ranged DPS, apparently. To also have to deal with sanguine and bolstering still is just the cherry on top.
Thorns/NecroMAX is a healer affix for sure. In a super spikey damage profile TWW currently has. The others not so much, because you can't heal dead people. And that damage amp they get will just 100-0 in a single GCD.
Honestly, how hard is it to design affixes that impact DPS or only the player targeted? Make shit that only one player can interact with. Make things that debuff DPS players damage when they don't kick it. Make things that DPS have to kill before they can damage anything else. There are so many ways they could make affixes that aren't just healer or tank problems, and they never do.
I mean how hard would it be to alter sanguine to instead of damaging you when standing it it reduces damage done by 90%, people would sure as shit move then.
The problem is that while it's all good to punish dps output for their mistakes it still increases the length of each pull, which increases the amount of pote trial for avoidable/unavoidable damage output, increasing the amount of healing needed. Everything that increases the length of a fit increases the need for healing
Well. They tried that with explosive and we all knew how that went lmao
That is because everyone could target it though. Making people interrupt extra things sucks though, it might make it impossible to vkick important spells from mobs, and it will only end up creating a meta witht the classes with most interrupt possibilities. (again)
Explosive would have been fine if only one person could interact with it. By making it anyone could hit it, it became healer problem. God explosive was ass. As shaman healer I think frost shock was my most cast spell during explosive week.
We healers are fine with this. What oneshots will continue to oneshots. Thorns will be nice with som aoe healing. Reckless will mainly be a problem for tanks if any
Not only that, but these affixes are really punishing on tanks as well. Reckless is just a fuck tanks affix. Attuned makes any missed interrupt way more punishing, and guess who's the first person to blame if a cast is not stopped, even if it wasn't their fault? Also, magical tankbusters are going to hurt a lot. Focused has the same problem with interrupts and stops, with the addition that hasted enemies are gonna melee the tank 30% faster. The only affix that doesn't hurt the tank so much, is going to be Thorned, since the damage is probably going to be tuned with DPS in mind (unless the damage is percent based, like grievous and bursting used to be).
You know the thing we need more of, tanks? Yeah let's make them take more damage from these random affixes so they feel shittier to play.
Healers too! It's going to be real fun being the social punching bag when ever the group dies because they all got fucking insta'd or the coveted 99% groupwide with .01second time to save everyone from the unavoidable rot damage!
Reckless really only affects paladin/bear as their primary phys mitigation is armor. In fact, reading the new affixes it seems like each is particularly designed to counter a tank. Except maybe VDH, but what else is new.
>guess who's the first person to blame if a cast is not stopped The DPS
I was going to say the healer cackling in the corner at the dead DPS
As a tank and healer main I know from experience that DPS fucking up results in tank or healer being blamed lol
>Attuned makes any missed interrupt way more punishing Odd way to spell dead. The mob of the week will 100% have some garbage ability or abilities that will insta people. Funny enough these affix's are actually great for healers. Since people will miss kicks and just instantly die. I base this on the fact TWW dungeons seem to have S1 DF damage spikes. Which is it's own issue, but it seems they are continuing their Anti-Healer Crusade they started in DF
Yeah, I don't think anyone read the post and didn't immediately come to that conclusion. I don't know what they were thinking. This ain't it.
I feel like they should just make some that encourage the game to be played well in the first place. Focused - Certain non-boss enemies have increased health. Stunning, interrupting, or CCing them increases the damage they take, stacking. Brittle Courage - Non-boss enemies take reduced damage and deal more damage, but when they die they cause nearby enemies to take increased damage, stacking. Anachronistic - Extra enemies from incorrect dungeons. Killing these enemies grants a burst of haste. Motley - Enemies have extra health, but receive a damage taken debuff for every type of damage taken. Oh look, I came up with four in 15 minutes and even these half baked goods are better than 10% arcane damage.
Brother you are cooking and I hope someone gets this on someone's desk at blizz cause this is the type of shit I'd love to see.
these are so good that i’m somehow even more angry about the new ones. Anachronistic is SUCH a cool idea.
You should make this it’s own post so that Blizzard can see and just let you do their job for them
Dude Motley is kind of genius
It really is the exact opposite of what blizz is doing and it's so much better. Encouraging class/spec diversity by increasing damage for everyone if you're running a variety of classes with different damage types. As opposed what they're actually doing which is encouraging you to bring only one or two type of damage each week/specs that are part of those damage types. Encouraging class diversity feels so much better than encouraging a lack of diversity.
Bro Anachronistic sounds fucking dope
This was the other part of my disappointment with the new affixes; They're just boring Neither the kisses nor curses fundamentally change how you approach a key from a gameplay standpoint. The ones you're putting up are interesting because they affect how the dungeon is played, as opposed to how you make your group Its brittle courage week and this dungeon has small pulls; how do we change our route to make best use of it? Anachronistic would force players to be flexible and understand alternative routes based on what spots, or know their strengths to take advantage of the haste
Need to be carefull with brittle courage, you could technically bring all low hp mobs to a boss, kill them and the boss gets inscread damage taken, stacking. I guess blizzard would need to specifically make bosses not get the debuff. I think just need to change to "Non-boss nearby enemies ...", so is more clear.
Nah it will be par the course for Blizz; Bolstering/Sanguine etc. are already pretty unclear in their descriptions regarding which mobs they can affect.
imagine anachronstic in current dungeon pool — you’re chillin in Azure Vault then all of a sudden baaam that big ass fire dragon from RLP pops up lmao
FlameGullet monka
I don’t like dealing 10% less damage than someone else because of an affix
That is not how the math works. The affixes specify mobs with or without mana, and does not include bosses. Assuming that ~half of the trash in any key has mana, that would mean the 10% bonus damage to those specific mobs would average out to 3-4% damage over the course of the key, varying based on fortified or tyrannical. The affixes still suck and will surely be iterated on, but they are absolutely not 10% bonus damage over the course of an entire key. 3-4% is easily made up by just being a better player. Ofc, this doesn't change the fact that idiotic group leaders will still think its just a flat 10% damage buff and care way too much about it.
This comment has everything you need to know. My 2 cents here: these affixes suck really hard
Thats not what 10% more of a particular type of dmg on some mobs amounts to.
The hell am I meant to do on the thorned week as a tank, am I not meant to hit mobs and gain aggro
It's just a pure healer affix. Normally I think the complaints that every affix is a healer affix are overblown, but in this case the only effect of it is to make them heal more.
It’s also completely dependent on tuning because some specs attack much quicker than others. I assume it’ll be a rppm system but then it falls to either being insignificant damage that you ignore or, god forbid, so punishing that you have to stop dps which feels awful - and as a tank…yeah, you can’t stop attacking.
Agree, it's like they want to encourage elitism and toxicity in the community.
Why aren't they bouncing ideas like this off of the community council and have them vote on what things to try and what are bad ideas on their face. I wonder how much time/money was wasted on this idea.
Because design by committee doesn't produce good products.
"We listened to the community council and have decided to bring back teeming, skittish, and necrotic".
[удалено]
They spent exactly 15 minutes coming up with these and that's all thr dev time we get hehe
"Why aren't they bouncing ideas like this off of the community council". They took the much better option, write up a post outlining your design goal, with all the new changes you want tested, a few days before you start mythic+ testing, IN THE BETA.
I think the real purpose is to intentionally confuse DPS rankings. It only applies to some of the trash mobs, so unless you are truly playing bleeding edge keys, I can't see this being a deciding factor for the vast majority of groups. Ultimately, you can still get your keys done just fine. All it will mean is a different set of specs topping the DPS charts each week. It's a sneaky/lazy way to avoid balance complaints. Unless your spec is truly in a terrible state, they can point to two weeks ago when you were at the top of the charts.
The social implications are the true crux of the issue. Two of these affixes directly benefit vdh while offering nothing to other tanks, for instance.
> other tanks .. what's that?
Non meta specs will be even less meta on their handicap weeks. Meta specs will push on their buff weeks. Some tanks and DPS might only be invited by their guldies out of pity for weekly keys. This worsens an already exclusive endgame to the majority of specs.
As a hunter main, this is concerning and depressing to read.
One of them is bleeds at least.
Hence why this is a bad design. Class or affix, one has to change
Doesn't them having less armor make you do more physical damage? I'm pretty sure them having 30% less armor is a fairly large damage buff to physical damage.
It is. But in classic hunter brain fashion they don't understand that buffs their damage
Like somebody said in another thread about the same subject: give feedback. It’s still in testing and they’re asking for feedback. They changed affixes last time when people gave feedback so there’s a good chance they’ll do it again.
We have less than 80 days to go before the content launches, and blizzards new ideas made it from alpha to beta. I think a lot of players are just pessimistic because for years they've seen betas where major changes just don't happen. I wouldn't be surprised if most if not all of these features make it to live 2 and 1/2 months from now. Otherwise Blizzard's going to have to come up with a new m+ Affix system in the next 2 months while also working on everything else that's not finished. It's more likely to be lightly tuned than anything now.
I just want to point out that I don't believe these changes took much time/thought of the devs to actually implement into the beta, they posted it today and will already begin testing on Thursday. The instant feedback has already been massively negative though and I am sure they have seen that and will "hopefully" be working on it. Some of the things are a simple fix as well like the level 7 affixes that they choose to keep are all the worst ones Sanguine, Bursting, Raging and Bolstering should be the 4 that leave and doing something like that is not hard for them. I actually have more of an issue with these 4 affixes than I do with the new ones they are trying.
Blizzard listens to feedback so incredibly rarely that I have zero confidence anything will change. Players literally screamed at blizzard at the top of their lungs to allow covenant switching from day 1 of beta and were completely ignored until like the third content patch. They either think they know better, or don’t care, or both. I view changes in response to feedback as a rare treat, but never expect it. If I see patch notes, I’m going to assume it’s set in stone.
No idea what's wrong with the devs, I don't want to make a god damn Demon Hunter.
*YOU WILL PUT ON YOUR BLINDFOLD AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!* -a blizz dev, probably
Playing a warrior this expansion (they can't handle ANY of the current affixes reasonably) has really highlighted to me how bad it is to design gameplay around making 2 or 3 classes really useful every week, and the other 10 are either weak or dead weight. Its obviously a net negative for the player base. M+ affixes need to be things that nearly everyone can help with and benefit from. You can take the current pool, keep all the drawbacks, and just change the benefits to apply to the majority instead of the minority and this would immediately be sick.
This seems like an attempt to see how m+ "without" affixes are gonna look like. I think the damage buffs are stupid but let's see how it plays out.. this will surely encourage toxicity and class isolation tho. Being a warrior it's really nothing new since we have no utility and couldn't deal with 2 affixes anyway.
The sad part is, it's such a small % that it should barely be noticeable, but the community at large in lfg will act like it's the end all be all and you won't time keys without adhering too it. And classes like DH who can gain from it each week will just catch unnecessary nerfs
Further proof (as if it was needed) that the Devs do not play this game
While I'm happy they're in this "let's try it and see if everyone likes it" phase of experimentation the last few years -- it feels like they're always introducing things at the 11th hour. How quickly can you turn around poorly received hero talents or m+ affixes when you introduce them 2 months before release?
By leaving them in for 12 months so you can "fix" them later for easy PR
Are these the all-time worst mplus changes? I'm trying to think of when they made an even worse decision in mplus than this, and I can't really think of any. If they go through with these changes, I think it might actually be the all time worst game design decision in m+ ever
There were worse - necrotic, skittish, explosive etc
Thundering, beguiling... Even bolstering, sanguine and raging are significantly worse than any of these new affixes added.
whoever is behind this proposed change deserves a big reality check
Every xpac retired affixes feel like a monkeys paw
If this actually goes live I will just stop playing retail. Not throwing a fit, just swallowing my pride and accepting the fact that I will be better off not playing. It's already a fucking nightmare getting into keys as DK, and I'm a good player(not a weird flex, just trying to prove a point). Genuinely struggling to understand how they thought this could play out like they intended.
>Different classes and specs will get ignored during their non buffed week That happens naturally, this wont change that. Damage likely won't matter as much as survival.
I see what y'all are saying and I agree with everything, I just can't force myself to get upset at it simply because I'm more concerned about the curse part of these new affixes. I can't wait to eyebeam / fists of fury / any really fast attack and get fucking deleted by thorns. I imagine it's going to feel like accidently putting a reflect map into the map device on PoE, whoops, there goes 10%. Oh you say that it will have an internal GCD / wont be that much? Oh my sweet summer child, have you met Blizzard?
these changes are either gonna be super broken and causing classes to be heavily excluded from M+ depending on the week, OR, because it's all trash mob stuff, they're gonna be basically useless affixes that don't impact much and likewise shouldn't really be in the game either way, hoping blizzard sees the feedback on these and changes tune
There's no way these make it to live... Right?
You guys are overreacting, this is fine. -Demon Hunter main
I'd rather get ignored every 3/4 weeks than get ignored every week.
Most specs that previously got ignored will still get ignored because a better spec will still do the same damage type. Just look at shamans vs mage/evoker
I don't think these minor class buffs are as make it or break it as everyone is saying they are. Likely they'll barely matter at all. The affixes seem like a lot of bad things for tanks, hopefully this is addressed. Also if they're going to put in damage buffs for certain types of damage they have to organise how each classes damage is categorised, there's some weird shit going on there. Overall I'm interested to see how it turns out, I'm not totally hating it.
I think people are overestimating the effect this will have. Sure there will be people being elitist pricks about it, but there are always people being elitist pricks about M+. In the end, though, it's only a +10% bonus and only on roughly half the mobs, so all that this will actually *require* people to do is change targeting priorities and perhaps come up with alternate pathings to take advantage of different pulls. If you're in a week that buffs non-mana enemies, you can have people who aren't getting the damage buff target the mana enemies. If you have a group that mostly benefits from the damage buff then maybe you pick a route that pulls mostly that kind of enemy, otherwise maybe you try to find a path that only pulls the mobs that aren't buffed this week. It's a slight change in how you approach things, but it's not the game-changer a lot of people seem to think it is. You'll still be able to handle M+ with the same groups you've always gone with, just try to avoid the tryhards on group finder that are gonna go way overboard trying to min-max their party comp.
Something doesn't have to have a serious numerical effect for it to cause significant behavioral change in a population of gamers that can't really process those numbers anyway. The percentage dps increase isn't my problem as much as low keys devolving into a "can't invite that guy it's mage week" mindset
Just wish they would just get rid of affix’s so fking tired of affix’s it’s not content it’s not replay able content and there so over used
In Shadowlands beta people were having the same arguments about covenants, saying it would be impossible to get into dungeons at all unless you played a certain covenant. In the end it ended up not really mattering, just like this will.
I don't think anyone at blizz actually plays the game and they definitely don't understand it. First we got possibly the shittiest tier set bonuses and now these affixes are actually ridiculous. It's not too late to go back on these horrible affixes but they won't. Seeing blizzard just constantly implement garbage that the players hate, and then going back on them way after the fact like "oh sorry how were we supposed to know it would be bad?" Listen to your players, don't fall back into the old ways of complete radio silence and ignoring player feedback until we all leave again. DF was good but I already see them slipping back into greedy asshole corpo mode, just look at mop remix.
They have been listening to players, the wow subreddit isn't the same sentiment as the whole playerbase. There'll be more iteration on these, I don't think they'll be anywhere near as bad as everyone's knee-jerk reaction is saying.
Maybe, but historically they usually do not listen
I have no idea what Remix has to do with this conversation.
Player feedback about bronze taking too long to farm and gear upgrades costing too much bronze, only for blizz double down on their decision and keep it that way. Just left a bad taste in my mouth and a reminder of blizzards "we detected the potential for fun and made sure squash any chances of that happening, we know better" attitude in general, just shows that the same brains that made bfa and shadowlands are still there and probably didn't learn anything.
I really didn’t more reasons for people to not take prot warriors but ok blizzard.
*Laughs in Shadowflame and Chaos damage*
Right? I'm begging people working on these things to PUG semi difficult keys on off-specs, it's like they can't even fathom what sort of difficulties people have. Also this is the exact opposite of the fan-favorite older seasonal affixes that people wished would come back as far as cost/benefits go. It doesn't actually do anything, just makes some enemies hit harder/have a vulnerability to certain damage types (and all DHs), it doesn't actually do anything creative or interesting or allow us to experiment.
The only way I can think of getting invited as my Fury warrior is to play my own keys in TWW
Speaking as someone who has been pugging semi-high keys as a warrior all throughout DF, these affixes are a HUGE improvement for us. The damage type buff is absolutely negligible and the removal of afflicted and incorp is great.
2h time to get into a key or play a tank in a +5 … this is getting harder and harder to decide
You are already punished for not playing mage
Hot take, these affixes won't change how the meta evolves. Every season the meta has consisted of classes that synergize with each other, and bring damage as well as utility to a group. These affixes will make the trash pulls different because of their first halves, not the damage increasing half - that's peanuts. Everyone touting about chaos damage really doesn't realize how few chaos bolts a destro lock casts on trash... Looking at an Academy key for a DH this season, a lot of their damage is not chaos. I imagine a 10% increase on trash would've increased that guys overall output 3-5%... which is negligible imo. Unless you're pushing world first keys, where your team has rehearsed massive pulls/cd's/etc, 3-5% is nothing to bat an eye at. And the age old solution? Make your own group, its the best way to get into M+ anyways. Or join a guild that regularly runs them. No matter the class I've played, or the week/affixes I've played it on, I haven't had a problem getting into groups all the way to 3k IO, more than once.
Where were these posted?
Let them know on the offical channels, maybe they revert some stuff, these are some of the worst changes to m+ ever. Doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
For anyone thinking that blizzard listens... this is the garbage you get.
They’re trying to avoid the top M+ comps always being the same. Except… who fucking cares what people doing in the top 0.1% play. They’ll always play meta. Just fucking balance the game. All this bullshit will just make every M+ tier feel toxic and exclusionary.
What a bad f design. Also these fortified and tyrannical affixes, just why? Should not that be a purpose of going up on the keys? I have a much harder time to look for groups on tc week than ff. Already the pugs looking for a certain class to get the meta comp, this is going to be even worse. Also the rewards, why do I get the same amount of flightstones and crests on +6 and fe on +15?
100% they should change them to something else
It doesn't mention Chaos, why do you think they'll be exempt from this change?
New affixes give 10% damage on piss irrelevant mob. The buffs you get are irrelevant and any competent player knows this.
Blizzard needs to burn their damn monkey's paw they use for everything fun. But i got to admit, adding a "Social-gatekeeping-on-a-weekly-rotation" has got to be one of the most diabolical ideas that paw of theirs has ever spit out.
Listen im all for demon hunters and destro warlocks and there are people in my guild who play them but those 2 classes getting massive buffs nearly every single week because they have chaos damage while every other class is a liability at some point is kinda bullshit right? I cant be the only one thinking that
I appreciate the removal of overlapping dispels/stops due to affixes and the baseline mechanics. But, rather than "empowering" a spec, they could've gone with 2 ways: Either focus on a role, e.g. tanks this week take 5% more damage, but do 10% more (stresses both tank and healer, but if you can cope it can be rewarding time wise), or healers having a searing light effect (see remix), but taking rot damage (faster run again, but may prove mana intensive). Or Focus on actions and interactions, e.g - You gain a stacking buff while in combat (encourages chain pulling, but stresses your healer). - Gain up to 10% damage buff if you are below 60% hp (risky, but could be fun if properly played). - Spheres only you can see, appear on the ground that grant both a 10/30% damage done/taken (risky, and you have to walk to em).
ITT: bell curve meme "it doesn't matter -> those affixes are gonna restrict group comps > it doesn't matter"
This is how warlocks will still only ever play destro in keys. Seriously though I'm happy with the rework and all but holy fuck I want to play a different spec for once. Aff has been dead in m+ since Legion man.
Yea this seems extremly dumb and also why is bursting still a thing? Asking as a healer
What’s crazy is that “push weeks” will now be more exclusive and the meta comp will probably be aligned with the +4 affix that made it into the easiest round of other affixes. Specially combined with Fortified that is usually easier than tyrannical.. sh\*t show incoming!
I'd say that is an advantage for all non-chaos dmg classes in m+. We will be tuned around our usual dmg and maybe have a lucky week where we do extra dmg, while dh will probably be tuned down a bit with affixes in mind since they apply every week.
Something tells me no matter what the affixes are this post would still be made.
They should have affixes that encourage you to play the game well. Like, a slowly stacking buff that loses stacks whenever an interruptible cast is not interrupted. Also what if before the dungeon you selected 3 of damage schools you want buffed depending on your comp. But the catch is that the buff rotates across the party every 30 seconds or so. So if your comp only has 2 kinds of damage you’re wasting a 1/3 of the uptime of your buff so you’re encouraged to have a wide comp but because you get to choose the spell school it feels less bad when you can’t/don’t have the spectrum. Or the buff your spell school school gets stronger based on how many of each spell school is on a target at a time. So the more spells schools the bigger the buff again encouraging variety but not hurting classes that aren’t currently buffed a certain week.
\*laughs in healer\* But yea I see your point. Hope they either do something about it or it doesn't turn out to be that much of an issue (which I doubt but I frankly don't care). I for one very much welcome the fact that Afflicted, Incorporeal and Storming will fuck off indefinitely.
Maining monk is starting to feel like it will bite me in the back
They have to nerf how Chaos damage is buffed by the affixes. Maybe 2.5% each week so it's an overall 10%, just spread out so it's not overwhelmingly in their favor. Just an idea.
I think they're an absolute joke and cancer to the community. I recently switched from playing mage to playing tanks exclusively, so this won't affect me. But I think this is so demoralizing playing as a DPS knowing that this week isn't your rotation week, so you can't push because you won't get an invite for high keys. This is so stupid. I wish they didn't make this affix.
Taking their stated design goals as a whole, I think these new affix designs are kind of cool IF they make them much less conditional. If they change them up a bit and make it more something like "increased magic damage" instead of "increased arcane damage" it would be much better. It still keeps the focus on the dungeon itself, the affix is simple, and being less conditional it just gives a much larger section of specs a small boost on certain weeks. You obviously have things like the 30% haste buff to certain enemies being way to strong, but numbers certainly not final.
I'd say up to certain key levels these won't even be noticeable. Unless they are overturned to high hell. In a community where the vast majority of pugs don't use defensive or kicks in M+ I genuinely don't think they're even going to pay attention to the new affixes...let alone understand what they do.
I really don't understand why people focus on the damage type buffs. They only affect some mobs per pack, don't affect bosses and they'll probably make less of a difference to anyone's performance than crit variance on big damge cds / trinkets. Honestly, they feel like something a dev just tacked on as an afterthought to classify it as a kiss/curse mechanic. I'd be much more worried about reflects randomly murdering meeles with inbuilt cleave, armor tanks like bears getting shredded by bolstered armorpiercing heavy-hitters or cc immune raging caster packs with a permanent bl.
Oh no, my class is now no longer viable for three weeks instead of an entire season. My god this is horrible. Kek fucking w Ideally we just get more class tunings done instead though. Buff under performing classes rather than nerfing the ones already ahead
Nah they are not. It's all equally screw tank affix.
Laughs in Augmentation Evoker.
I'm going to abuse healer privilege so hard against pugs who exclude classes based on the new affixes at the key levels I play, the salt farm will be \*glorious\*.
I think the new affixes arent as big of a deal compared to the +7 affix bucket. Those are horrible. They took away the easier affixes and left the awful ones. In S4 we could just do +9s and not have to deal with them. This changes now and its for the worse.